How to Handle Angry Customers

When you’re working in a call center, you’re going be introduced to the word “irate.”

Call center agents describe situations where they encounter “angry customers” and label them as “irate customers.”

Irate is a fancy word that kind of makes me feel intelligent and superior whenever I use it.

The word irate doesn’t affect me emotionally as much as the word angry so I ended up using the word irate for a long time.

I eventually stopped using the word “irate” when referring to the customer and began using the word “passionate” to describe the customer situation instead.

Here are some examples:

The customer is passionate about getting his service back.

The customer is passionate about getting the best rates from our company.

The customer is passionate about getting his request accomplished today.

The customer is passionate about his desire to speak with a manager.

There’s something about the word passionate that puts a smile on my face instead of the usual stressful or heavy feeling that I get when talking to customers that I described as angry or irate.

It’s as if changing the words really does help me change my emotions.

Whenever I hear the word “passionate,” I imagine the actor Antonio Banderas.

That’s because whenever he talks in his movies, he sounds really angry but he’s really passionate with what he’s saying.

Whenever I use the word passionate to describe the situation, my perception of the customer changes.

I’m able to see the customer as another person and not my enemy.

I see the customer as someone who is simply passionate about trying to get a task done or to get a solution for his or her problem.

Instead of seeing a customer as someone who’s trying to start a fight with me, I see the customer as someone who’s fired up and emotionally invested in the outcome, and with my guidance, I can help him or her get what he or she wants.

This makes the call less serious.

This makes the idea of facing an angry customer less scary.

The customer may raise his or her voice and perhaps use some profanity but that’s not going to bother me because he or she is not angry, he or she is just passionate.

You are likely to get offended or upset by someone who is angry but you are also likely to forgive someone who is passionate.

Adding the word passionate makes a scary call a fun one for me.

After a few weeks of implementing the change to my calls, the senior team leader in charge of our shift went to my workspace and got everyone’s attention.

He announced that I’m the “super-agent” of the account because I have the highest amount of good customer service feedback in the entire account as well as the highest number of sales that day.

If your weakness is facing people who are angry, test this lesson and see if this improves your situation.

Begin describing your customers as as passionate instead and see how your attitude and eventually your scores changes.